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Nitrites and Nitrates sky high

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Hi,
I'm new to the forum and have been reading all the great advice about a fishless cycle. I started a 10 gallon on a fishless cycle about 3 weeks ago. I have 2 Top Fin 10 filters which I've added some ceramic rings to as well as the filter is came with. I have an established aquarium and used some of the filter media from it to seed the tank. I started with dosing once a day to get the ammonia reading to 2 ppm and it took less than a week for the nitrite reading to rise so I cut back my ammonia dose to 1 ppm once a day and continued to do that for about a week. The ammonia is back to zero every day now and the nitrites and nitrates are as high as they can read on the API test chart. That has been going on for about 10 days or more now so I've cut the ammonia back to .5 ppm every day. Should I dose may every other day to get the readings to finally fall on the nitrites? Any advice would be much appreciated.

Keep dosing the ammonia at 1 ppm. The nitrates are not important for now. The nitrites should fall. The issue may be your pH. If too acidic (below 6.5), the growth of nitriting bacteria can slow. Your cycle is going very well and most people take at least six wweeks to finish so keep doing what you have been. The nitrite levels will fall.

Knowledge is fun(damental)

A 75 gal with eight Discus, fake plants, and a lot of wood also with sand substrate. Clean up crew is down to just two Sterba's Corys. Filters: continuous new water flow; canister w/UV, in-tank algae scrubber!! Finally, junked the nitrate removal unit from hell.

I would do a large water change, redose the ammonia to .5 - 1. (max) myself. You only have so much room for all those nitrites in your filter media. Sometimes it takes a little "bump" to get it going again.

Over dosing with ammonia is very easy to do in those small tanks and nitrites and nitrates that high indictate to me it has been overdosed.

Thank you Lady Hobbs. I kind of felt that with the nitrates so high the bacteria colony that breaks down nitrites was alive and well and was expecting a nitrite drop. I will do a water change today and keep the ammonia level down to .5 ppm. Would 50% be adequate?

Normally I would have said to wait it out a bit longer. But with your readings sky high and off the scale on the testers, then I would do the water change and a large one. Dosing as you have been of .5 is fine. You have your bacteria and now you are only having to feed it to keep it alive. You will be only having a few fish in that 10 gallon, as well.

Yes it's for a poor betta waiting in his one gallon for his new home. I've been doing a 100% water change every third day for him with a dechlorinator of course and watching the water temperature to make sure it is the same. He looks great a is busy with a bubble nest he has to start over and over (poor thing). I might add a couple of snails after the tank finishes cycling.

One little fish going in that tank you probably could have even started your cycle with only 1 and then dropped to .50 as soon as you saw those nitrites. You only need to grow enough bacteria for what you will be stocking.